Linear Algebra is harder than Calculus

But not because LA is intrinsically more difficult than calc but because the pedagological tools for LA are seriously flawed. For calc you just put in the title of the problem you're working on in youtube and out pops about 10 videos that will walk you through how to do the problem. Plus the solution manual I had for calc was honestly easier to understand than the worked examples in the book, it had more steps. For linear Algebra you don't have that. There are only 2 lecture series on LA by Strang and Khan and they aren't all that good. I'm on my 3rd LA text and they've all been pretty bad. The mistake they make is they assume the real basic of LA are too easy and they jump immediately to these abstruse problems that no one cares about. They're almost like brain teasers. I can't even master the mechanics of LA or the notation and then they shove these hard problems in my face without teaching me how to do the real easy stuff.

Is this a question?
Strang's text/class is far from the best organized on the market, but it's probably one of the most concrete and applications oriented. If you find it "abstruse" and disconnected from the "real world", then you're pretty out of luck as far as LA (or any higher math) goes. There are clearer and more insightful texts, but they're considerably more abstract. Linear algebra is a beautiful subject, but it only gets more abstract from here. Doing LA means doing proofs, which means not having fixed algorithms; solving problems is going to require some amount of exploration.

It's really not a good thing to rely on youtube videos and solution videos. The further you go in your education, the less such things are available. If you rely too much on these resources, then I think you're studying wrong.

Also, with LA, this is probably your first course where you are dealing more with the properties of the structures you are studying than with the actual things that make up those structure. This is another layer of abstraction that you have not yet encountered, and so it will seem odd at first.

Yep its true. Linear algebra is ridiculously hard and it is made harder by bad teachers.

See, I was under a different impression. Gilbert Strang says in his preface that LA is easier than Calc. So you're saying he's wrong?

Right now, I have to make a critical decision. When I try out the exercises I literally get about 90% of them wrong. Either I'm going to have to go back to the beginning and write down every single thing I understand and ask questions about every single thing I don't understand or just slog through it with only minimal understanding and hope I can get through QM without it. I do self-study and I'm not looking for a job in the science. In fact, I actually belong to the humanities, but I discovered a long time ago that if you stay isolated in the humanities as 97% of humanities majors do, then you're doing yourself an immense disservice and you're setting yourself up for a lopsided understanding of the world.

I always get confused by the level of course that people are talking about. If you've never seen any linear algebra in your life and you've only had calculus then I assume you are referring to a course similar that usually taught to freshmen and sophomores in the US which is just matrix and vector algebra in Euclidian space, mostly 3-dimensional. If that's the case you should work through a book like Leon before you try to study general theory in abstract spaces.

Linear Algebra is harder than calculus only in the fact that linear algebra is rigorous and elementary calculus is, for the most part, based on intuition

Analysis, which is pretty much just rigorous caluclus is, and I think everyone would agree, harder than linear algebra - imo as far as branches of maths go linear algebra is probably one of the nicer ones, I believe Strang said 'linear algebra is like analysis but everything is behaving nicely'

Perhaps you should learn some set theory and group theory before you start on linear algebra? That way you'll see how you build linear algebra up, starting with sets, adding a set of operations on the set, then adding an action of another set, called a field, on the set.
Or maybe try reading a basic proofs book, like 'How to Prove it - A Structured Approach', that might give you some kind of insight into how to do proofs in linear algebra and introduce you to a level of abstraction beyond the 'intuitive feel' that you're used to.

Either I'm going to have to go back to the beginning and write down every single thing I understand and ask questions about every single thing I don't understand

This is a good approach, if you know how to prove results then slowly they'll seep into you as if they were obvious facts

or just slog through it with only minimal understanding and hope I can get through QM without it.

Quantum Mechanics is pretty tricky on it own, without a solid background in linear algebra you're going to get lost before you even start. You'll also want to understand some basic analysis facts here too.

The mistake they make is they assume the real basic of LA are too easy and they jump immediately to these abstruse problems that no one cares about

You'll care about those things one day, I think most people felt the same way about the isomorphism theorems when they first saw them but later on realised that it's quite a handy little fact to have with you. (I think a lot of authors don't point out enough when a theorem is going to turn out to be especially useful later on, so you end up wading through a sea of theorems and proofs without any idea why these are important, which is why it's a good idea to work with them for a while and try and apply them to a problem even if it is taylor made to require the use of your newly discovered theorem)

I can't even master the mechanics of LA or the notation and then they shove these hard problems in my face without teaching me how to do the real easy stuff.

If you're having trouble understanding notation then you just need to work with it for a while really. Usually when I start on a new textbook and the author introduces a whole new set of notations I need to stop for a second and look at the definitions, absorb what they mean and perhaps try and make a few examples.

I also agree 100% with Vandium50 and micromass, you've got to stop relying on there being numerous sources (especially lectures online, textbooks imo are far superior to any lecture you haven't personally attended) and you need to know how to derive the results given in the textbook/lectures.

See, I was under a different impression. Gilbert Strang says in his preface that LA is easier than Calc. So you're saying he's wrong?

Right now, I have to make a critical decision. When I try out the exercises I literally get about 90% of them wrong. Either I'm going to have to go back to the beginning and write down every single thing I understand and ask questions about every single thing I don't understand or just slog through it with only minimal understanding and hope I can get through QM without it. I do self-study and I'm not looking for a job in the science. In fact, I actually belong to the humanities, but I discovered a long time ago that if you stay isolated in the humanities as 97% of humanities majors do, then you're doing yourself an immense disservice and you're setting yourself up for a lopsided understanding of the world.

You don't need to be a genius in linear algebra proofs to do quantum mechanics problems. To fully understand the theory, you might need to go deeper, but I find that its a waste of time to try and "intuitively" understand the matrix formulation since wave mechanics is soooo much easier to visualize, and matrix formulation is in my opinion strictly used for problem solving, especially for spin systems since wave mechanics isn't so nice with spin systems.

In problem solving, you will need to know how to do matrix algebra with square matricies i.e. take eigenvalues, then find eigenfunctions. Its not computationally difficult, just be careful. You'll also need to know the concepts of operator algebra. Pick up a copy of Griffith and try some problems out. If you are interested in *science* as opposed to *math* I think its much better to just straight up do the physics, and pick up whatever math you need along the way, as long as you have a solid math background of: mastery of calculus and multivariable/vector calculus, familiarity with ODEs, integral transforms and basic matrix algebra, and basic understanding of complex variables.

And no, linear algebra is far harder than calculus. Calculus can be "seen" geometrically and its easier to convince yourself that its right. LA cannot. Calculus also doesn't have too many proofs and the formalism is easier to understand since it uses nice familiar things y=f(x) rather than big scary matrices.

Perhaps you should learn some set theory and group theory before you start on linear algebra?

I had an introduction to group theory as part of my molecular spectroscopy class. That stuff is ridiculously difficult, and I was amazed it actually had physical applications. Nonetheless, I do not think it is helpful to learn group theory for elementary linear algebra (the type based on square matrix computations).

Perhaps you should learn some set theory and group theory before you start on linear algebra? That way you'll see how you build linear algebra up, starting with sets, adding a set of operations on the set, then adding an action of another set, called a field, on the set.
Or maybe try reading a basic proofs book, like 'How to Prove it - A Structured Approach', that might give you some kind of insight into how to do proofs in linear algebra and introduce you to a level of abstraction beyond the 'intuitive feel' that you're used to.

I'm sorry, but I disagree with this advice. You are suggesting that he 1)learns what a group is 2)learns what a field is 3)learns how a field acts on group 4)understand linear algebra.

This is nearly impossible for a few reasons.

First, he is struggling with the abstractness of linear algebra right now. I don't see how adding another layer of abstraction will make things any better.

Second, nearly every algebra book I have seen uses examples from elementary linear algebra (which is what he s doing) as concrete examples. Yes, linear algebra is built from the stuff of Abstract Algebra, but this does not mean that someone needs to understand abstract algebra to understand linear algebra.

What you are suggesting is rather like suggesting that a struggling calc student work his way through baby Rudin. It just doesn't work because the textbook authors assume familiarity with more elementary math.

I guess I wasn't prepared for LA being harder than calc. I didn't take LA that seriously because I thought it would be a breeze, just as calc was more or less a breeze. I was a little caught off guard when I failed to understand it.

Having taken both calc and linear algebra, I struggled with the latter much more until I started using a better studying strategy. In the long run, I am inclined to say linear algebra is earier than elementary calculus. In calculus, you can get by without understanding the intuition behind theorems and just memorizing algorithms, but that won't work too well in linear algebra unless it is taught to engineers. I found actually going through the theorems one by one with TA's, professor, or other students who were well grounded in the book is all I really needed. Once I understood the theorems, I could answer the most difficult questions on the exams. In calculus, I felt that wasn't the case and there still computational questions that could stump you even if you have a deep, rigorous understanding of the material.

Don't approach linear algebra the same way you approach elementary calculus. It just won't work out too well in most cases. And if you think its hard now, wait until you get to linear transformations/mappings and the relationship between those concepts and what you have learned earlier in the course (rank, nullity, orthogonal projection, etc).

Georges Lemaitre was one of the founders of Big Bang theory. Sometimes his name gets attached onto the Friedman-Walker-Robertson-Lemaitre Metric

As for what aspects of LA I'm having trouble with, practically everything except for the real easy arithmetic parts, liking multiplying two matrices together. I've put a few specific questions in the homework section.